corrente

And moments of self-righteous moral excellence...





LOUISIANA
The State Baptist Annual, circa 1927:

Decent people no longer find lake and sea-shore a place of rest and relaxation. Modern bathing suits make modest men and women feel like hiding their faces in shame. Again and again I have been told, in different parts of Louisiana, that the present day swimming-pool is a menace to the morals of the young. Mixed bathing must be abolished.

Dance-halls are ticket-offices to Hell. The dance-hall has always been the handmaid of the brothel and the saloon. If we are to have men and women worthy to become parents of the coming generation, we must abolish the dance-hall. It leads to carnality and ought to have been abolished when we abolished the brothel and saloon. I would as soon have my son frequent a saloon as to have my daughter visit dance-halls. The modern dance, with its music, is nothing if not carnal. It leads to carnality, and, when kept up for hours, it leads straight to Hell. Two-thirds of the women of the street fell as the result of the dance-hall. The majority of the men who frequent dance-halls go there with nothing but carnal thoughts in their minds. The youth who goes to the dance-hall looking for clean pleasure is considered lacking in carnal technique. Innocence can not endure dance-halls, where the atmosphere is heavy with sensual music, and men and women seem to be held together with adhesive tape. If girls would dance with girls and men with men the movement against dance-halls would not be necessary.

Well cripes, ya just can't seem to please some folks these days. (bold emphasis above is mine) Theres a duct tape joke somewhere in there - too - so go at it.


"The dance has a secret language.... I would not like to die dancing. Would you?"


IOWA
Des Moines. Leaflet circulated circa 1927:

REASONS WHY I DON'T DANCE
BY EVANGELIST CARL BASSETT
I would not like to die dancing. Would you?
Three-fourths of the fallen girls in America were ruined by the dance, according to the testimony of dancing masters.

Dancing is contrary to the spirit of the whole Bible. The dance originated in a house of prostitution and was never danced outside of a house of prostitution for the first hundred years, and the steps they used then are tame compared to the steps they use now.

There are no soul-winning dancing Christians.
I couldn't pray at a dance. Could you?
I wouldn't enjoy reading my Bible after the dance.
No young man will go through the motions of the dance, hour after hour, without thinking impure thoughts.
I would be miserable if I knew God were watching me while dancing.
A girl who dances cheapens herself in the eyes of the finest men in town.
If a girl heard the ordinary conversation of men between dances, as they discuss her, that girl's cheeks would blaze with mortification and she would run home and never dance again.

The dance has a secret language, by which the man can silently learn if the girl in his arms is pure or not, without one word being uttered.

Dancing has created a condition in the public schools that is almost as bad as the white slave traffic.

I'm confident that CBS and David Brooks and all the rest of our newly recruited SCLM Christian crosslighters will be all over the story. Especially with respect to the "testimony" of them "dancing masters." Don't want to let them buggers slip away without a good goin' over.

I wonder what our "founding fathers" would do?:

"There is nothing that holds the family together like a little family prayer. Our Puritan fathers lived on parched corn, but they talked about God. They shot Indians through the port hole with one eye and taught the Bible to their children with the other."
~ remarks of Pastor Perry C. Hooper, as reported by the Toledo 'Blade', 1927.

Thats what I thought. Thats why them divorce rates is so much lower in Massachusetts. No womenfolk be runnin' off with some tall romantic swarthy savage as long as the port hole is blazin' away. I hope they emphasize this old time moral standard in the revised Red State highschool textbooks. Perhaps a new sticker is in order. As for all that naked carnal spirit dancin' and hooting and whoopin' it up around some pow-wow inferno of pagan lust till all hours of the morning... why, that'll get ya heaved into the Lake of Fire faster than a pair a blazing mortified cheeks at a dusty Ken Mehlman bunkhouse mixer. Serves them crazy chowder-head "Indians" right.

And keep your damned nebular hypothesizing to yerself, hippy!

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